


Rewind (Back to Their Trenches)

by Merry Madrigal (Brachylagus_fandom)



Category: The 39 Clues - Various Authors
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fire, Fix-It of Sorts, Implied/Referenced Character Death, POV Third Person Limited, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-04-28 20:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14457627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/pseuds/Merry%20Madrigal
Summary: Irina Spasky wakes up in a bland hotel room with the taste of ash in her mouth and a familiar knife in her hand. She wasn't expecting to wake up at all.





	1. Time Yet for a Hundred Indecisions (for a Hundred Visions and Revisions)

**Author's Note:**

> First things first: this fic contains: a lot of references to character death, including death of a child and death by burning alive; fire, including arson; death threats directed towards both adults and (more subtly) a child; implied murder, including of a child; and kidnapping.  
> This fic also contains spoilers for _In Too Deep_ (the book's ending and Irina's personal history) as well as general Cahill history and the Trent fire. That said, most of the knowledge of the 39 Clues series required by this fic boils down to "everyone distrusts/hates each other, and Isabel is evil."
> 
> The fic title is from "Last Post" by Carol Ann Duffy, and the chapter title is from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock."

Irina Spasky wakes with the taste of ash in her mouth. The hotel room around her is beige and bland, one of thousands she's stayed in over the years, and that's reassuring for the split second it takes her to remember what had happened the night before. Irina leaps to her feet, ready to fight her way out of the most benign-looking prison in existence; after what she did last night (if it was last night; her skin's unburned, and her lungs feel fine, but last night she died as smoke burned her lungs and fire licked up around her), she doubts she was put here by an ally. A knife, hidden in the place she always hides hers before she falls asleep, finds its way into her hand, and she spares a moment to unfold and examine it. It's deadly sharp, like every knife she's ever owned, and there's a slight indent where the blade and handle meet as if someone had tried to sharpen the heel of the blade a bit too earnestly. It looks just like Irina's first and favorite knife, down to sports of red nail varnish and divots from her nail needles, but that  _can't_  be right, she lost that knife seven years ago-

Irina folds the knife closed again and looks out the window. On the street below her, businessmen are rushing to work, children to school. She can see the Massachusetts State House far off to one side, and that's confirmation enough for her. This could be some sort of extremely strange long game - Irina can't think of a reason  _why_  someone would want her to believe she's traveled seven years into the past, but that doesn't man someone else hasn't - but it feels true somewhere in her gut. It is the morning of June 6, 2001, and she's twelve and a half hours away from lodging the knife in her hand into Hope Cahill's kitchen table as an ill-advised threat; Hope will laugh in her face and Arthur will list the knife's make and model in an attempt to threaten her. In thirteen hours, Irina will walk out of the Trent house, this knife still lodged in the table, and within fifteen, Dan and Amy, the two children she's just died for, will be orphans, their parents lost to the fire that claimed most of their possessions.

She can't do that again, not while she knows the consequences of her actions and inactions. None of them - at least no one but Isabel, her nominal ally in this fight - had gone to the Trent house that night with murder on their minds. It had been an attempt to get a clue, an attempt to get the pair to stop, an attempt to threaten them into submission and figure out who they were working for; no one was supposed to die. She just needs to make sure that this time around, no one does, which, considering what happened last time, is probably going to be more difficult than it should be.

Still, if there's a reason she's here, it's to stop tonight. She's far too early for anything else she regrets.

She needs to find Alistair. She doesn't trust the old man - she hasn't trusted anyone in seventeen, now ten, years - but she trusts him more than Isabel or Wizard or the Holts, and that will have to do. At the very least, he loves Hope - she's practically the daughter he never had - and that should persuade him to do something.

Irina takes her go bag, full of tricks and traps and poisons, with her as she leaves the hotel room. She has a sinking feeling she'll need it.

***

"Hello, Irina," Alistair says as she drops silently into the chair next to him. This particular cafe is a favorite of both of theirs thanks to a difficult-to-surveil seating area and an owner that prides herself in discretion; that, and she makes the best baklava. "Would you like some tea?" He gestures to the pot on the table. "It's raspberry."

"I'm fine," Irina says even though she really is parched and raspberry is her favorite; long practice has taught her not to accept food or drink unless she knows it isn't poisoned. "We need to talk about tonight."

"What about tonight?" Alistair asks as if he doesn't know what they both plan to do that night.

"The confrontation with Cahill and Trent," Irina says, and Alistair's eyes widen a fraction of an inch. "Isabel contacted you, me, the Holts, and Wizard about a month ago to intimidate them out of the hunt, and you agreed."

"And if I did?"

"Isabel plans to kill them both," Irina says, and Alistair's hands shake as he sets his teacup down. "She wants to set the house on fire with Hope and Arthur inside."

"And the children?"

"I don't know," Irina says as she tries to keep her mind on the task at hand. It's no use; there's a little blond boy with a stuffed monkey at the table next to them who doesn't look quite healthy, and the woman by the window is making increasingly frantic calls, and the doctor two tables over is holding his head in his hands… All Irina can think of is long missions and missed calls and coming home to a filled grave and empty house that reeked of death. She'd spent the first few days in shock, but some things didn't quite add up even then; she'd found poisoned chocolate (a half-empty package of Nikolai's favorite) in the cupboard and confused doctor's notes when she'd found the time and the strength to look through his files some years later. "It wouldn't be the first time." Even if it had just been an infection - an incredibly quick, incredibly ugly infection not detected until it was too late - Isabel has filled more too-small graves than Irina can count on her fingers.

"You have a plan."

"I have a scruple," Irina corrects. "No plan. Yet." Alistair sighs and sips his tea.

"I've met the Holts," Alistair says. "Eisenhower is… easily led." Irina snorts; she'd once convinced Eisenhower that there was a clue buried in the fields behind the San Jacinto monument during a (horribly hot, horribly dull, horribly fruitless) trip to Texas using only information she'd found on nearby signage, and he'd almost gotten arrested digging for it. "And his wife has a strong grasp of morality." Irina raises her eyebrows; Mary-Todd had tried to run her off the road before. (Admittedly, Irina had almost gotten her then-fiance arrested, but still. Not exactly a shining example of morality there.) "Her morals aren't necessarily rational, but she sticks to them, and they include not harming children. I trust her more than Cora, at least."

"You haven't trusted Cora since the incident in Mainz," Irina says. Alistair unconsciously rubs his bad leg, remembering how he got one of the poorly-set breaks in it.

"You haven't really trusted Isabel since Niklovana died," Alistair says.

"I didn't think anyone remembered him anymore." From Alistair's perspective, it's been 18 years since her husband had left on a business trip and never come back. 18 years is a long time to remember anyone, especially a man who lived his life halfway in the shadows and who hasn't been spoken of since the Kabras took power.

"No one still within the branch, perhaps," Alistair says, "but certainly not no one. Your husband was a…  _memorable_  man, to those who knew him."

"Didn't he try to kill you?"

"Haven't you?" Alistair sips his tea. "If we plan to beat Kabra, we need to start working. Do you know where the Holts are?"

"By the stadium," Irina says. "Let's go." Even if Eisenhower decides to try an all-out brawl again, getting a concussion is infinitely preferable to talking about Nikilovana; there's 25 long, cold years of emotional repression that she'd rather not touch there, especially when she has ten hours to prevent a double homicide.

***

The Holts, it turns out, are not inclined to start another brawl, if only because they decided to bring their brats with them on an extortion mission. It's not even as if they didn't think that this would turn out as serious as Irina knows it will; neither Mary-Todd nor Eisenhower look at all surprised when she and Alistair turn up at their hotel room with weapons in hand and grim expressions on their faces. (Irina isn't sure how much of her annoyance is the Holts' utterly irresponsible parenting and how much of it is that the boy methodically ripping apart a toy truck on the floor is looks just a little bit too much like Nikolai; she'd never found it strange when Vlad carried in little Nataliya on her less bloody days - she'd only avoided bringing Nikolai in because Nikilovana had had a tendency to make vicious enemies who wouldn't be above poisoning a child. Given that Alistair shares her low opinion of the children being here if the look on his face is anything to go by, she dismisses the thought at irrelevant.)

"We need to talk about tonight," Alistair says over one of the twins' shrieking about Cheerios.

"What about tonight?" Mary-Todd asks, eyes narrowing. She's always been the smarter of the pair.

"Isabel plans to murder the Trents tonight," Irina, not wanting to waste the precious few hours she has left, says, "including, most likely, the children." That's not exactly true - Irina is fairly sure Isabel hasn't even thought about what will happen to the children - but they need the Holts on their side if they're going to do this.

"What can we do?" Mary-Todd asks as if she has no other option but to help, and, for the first time since she woke up with the taste of ash in her mouth and seven years in the past, Irina smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The San Jacinto monument is, in fact, right next to/on top of the San Jacinto battlefield. There are still bodies in that field (according to the tour guides there), and it is illegal to go digging for them. I went on a school field trip there (and to Battleship Texas, which is right next to it), and, like the rest of Texas, it's insufferably hot from at least May through mid-September.


	2. A Lot Like Yesterday (a Lot Like Never)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The leadup to a slightly different fire, and what comes afterwards.

They do not all go to Hope and Arthur's house together; all (well, considering the Battleship Texas incident, three out of the four) of them are too smart for that. Irina arrives from the west at precisely ten o'clock, the time Isabel had specified, to find her branch leader and Cora Wizard (who, at least, had the sense to leave her son with Broderick for the duration of this trip) at an uneasy peace. Ten minutes later, Alistair arrives from the east with a twirl of his cane; he's slightly favoring his right leg, but it's the smoothest Irina's seen him walk in five, maybe seven years.

"Michael and Ellen send their regrets," Alistair says. "Sinead and her brothers were conducting chemistry experiments, and an… _incident_ occurred. The children will be fine, but the Starlings wanted to make sure there was no repeat emergency room trip."

"Understood," Isabel says with an expression of supreme annoyance and distaste. Irina hopes the Starlings are _very_ sure none of their doctors (or nurses, or anyone else in the vicinity) are active Lucians. "Where are the Holts?"

"Why should I know?" Alistair asks perfectly innocently, as if he and Irina and the Holts haven't spent three and a half hours planning this night to ensure everyone comes out alive.

"They're late," Isabel hisses. _"Someone_ should know where they are." A purple SUV races towards them, swerving between lanes and ignoring stop signs. Before Mary-Todd has finished haphazardly parking the SUV across the street from the Trent house, Eisenhower jumps out of the front passenger seat.

"Sorry we're late!" Eisenhower shouts. "The kids didn't want to go to sleep." In truth, if he's kept his word from earlier, Eisenhower has taken them to some Holt relative or another to keep them out of harm's way. Isabel rolls her eyes but, unusually for her, says nothing as Mary-Todd jogs to join them.

"Now that everyone's deigned to arrive," Isabel says, and there's the dig Irina was expecting (though it - really, anything _not_ involving someone on the ground unconscious or vomiting or bleeding from the ears at the very least - seems unusually nice by Isabel's standards), "let's go in."

To her credit, Hope doesn't react when she opens the door to face a group of her greatest enemies. Irina hadn't been able to warn her about this - she and Alistair both thought the risk that someone had it under surveillance was too high - but the only sign that Hope hadn't been expecting them is a slight twitch of her lips, a minute tightening of her fingers on the door as if she's wondering if they'll leave if she slams it in their faces. That kind mask is a hard one to pull off - Irina's seen maybe twenty people pull it off, and (at least) four of them are dead - and it almost makes Irina wonder if Hope knew they were coming. (It's a stupid thought - if Hope had known they were coming that long, dark night seven summers ago, she and Arthur would have had a plan to get out of the house alive - but plans go awry, and Irina still wonders.)

"Kabra," Hopes says by way of greeting, "you've brought friends this time." The words are sharp enough to bite even as Irina tries to figure out what other incident Hope is implying. (Is she referring to the incident in Monte Verde, where Hope almost joined the ancient remains she was studying? The one in Prague, where Hope and Arthur's honeymoon was cut short by half an army of "unidentified agents"? Some other incident Isabel hasn't deigned to inform the branch of?)

"I can assure you, Hope," Alistair says, "that we are united only by concern over your recent actions."

"As opposed to yours?" Arthur, appearing behind Hope, says. "As far as I know, we haven't killed anyone." Isabel doesn't noticeably bristle - for better and (mostly) worse, she has one of the best masks Irina's ever seen.

"Yet," Isabel says, "but, with your recklessness, you will, and you will do it soon. May we come in?" Hope and Arthur share a wary look before stepping back to allow the group on their front porch into their house, and Irina wants to scream at them; you _never_ let people you distrust into your home.

"So," Hope says as Arthur pours (possibly poisoned) coffee, "what exactly about our recent excursions makes it so much more dangerous than yours?"

"We don't know who you're working for," Mary-Todd says as if that means anything.

"My wife and I are not the only people in this room with questionable allegiances," Arthur says, and Eisenhower bristles; he's  always been sensitive to that sort of accusation. Something about his father, Irina knows, and something that would make him a rabidly devoted Tomas agent with three equally fervent Tomas children at the time of Grace's funeral. "You all support your branches, of course," Alistair's hand wraps around his cane, and Irina wonders if Arthur is pushing people's buttons on purpose or if he is actually that tactless, "but at least one of you gives all your information to an organization that isn't even Cahill." The expressions of irritation are replaced with ones of shock. (Definitely on purpose, then.)

"Madrigals?" Cora asks in a hushed voice as if the Man in Black will appear if she says the name loud enough. Hope and Arthur say nothing, a targeted move to imply Cora's right without saying anything. It's probably _not_ actually the Madrigals, then, but that only makes Irina wonder who it is.

"Hope," Isabel says in the exact same tone of voice she uses with her children, "your actions have consequences. Your little clue hunt has consequences."

"We never went on a clue hunt," Hope says.

"Why else would you travel the world years after your honeymoon?" Cora asks. "England, Jamaica, South Africa, China, Japan… the list goes on, end every single one has locations connected to the hunt."

"The only place in the world without connections to the hunt is Antarctica," Hope says.

"Scott expedition," Arthur, slightly behind and to the left of her, says.

"No place in the world is unconnected to the hunt," Hope says. "Besides, why is when and where we choose to travel any business of yours?" Hope is being more aggressive than she was last time. Maybe it's how Alistair and the Holts (and, of course, Irina herself, though Irina rarely spoke the first time around) are nearly silent. Maybe Alistair gave her and Arthur a quick warning and a few hours to plan. Maybe it's because they veered off-script with Mary-Todd's first statement of their purpose here. No matter the cause, it's certainly unsettling, if only because it means Irina has no idea what's happening.

"You're making a dangerous mistake," Isabel warns as she takes out a cigarette lighter and a small jug of something - probably an accelerant - out of her snakeskin purse. Arthur's eyes widen, and Alistair takes a step back. They both have a history with fire, with matches and gasoline and the Cahill inclination towards flames; they both know how this will end.

This is happening far too quickly. It's been less than half an hour since the Holts arrived and they all went in; they should still be talking in circles around Hope's latest excursions until Amy comes to ask what's going on and things escalate wildly out of control. Irina hadn't even stuck her knife into the table and walked out at this point the first time. What has she - have they - done to change the course of events so drastically?

"You wouldn't," Hope says.

"She most definitely would," Cora says, and there's a hint of fear in her voice. Irina wonders if she and Alistair could have recruited her after all.

"Are you really willing to risk your children's lives over your silly little hunt?" Isabel asks. Hope's mouth sets in a firm line, and Irina makes eye contact with Alistair. Things are about to go down, and they are about to go down _quickly._ Alistar switches the grip on his cane to one useless for walking but excellent for swinging it, and Irina looks at the matchbox carefully, wondering if she can move fast enough to grab it.

It's at this moment that Amy wakes up and decides to find out why strange voices are coming from the living room. Everyone's eyes flicker to her for a split second, and that's more than enough time for Isabel to smash the jug of accelerant and flick the lighter.

***

Fire. Fire is everywhere. Irina's out - she was nearest the door before everything went up in flames absurdly quickly - but it still feels like there's no way out of the burning house, like she can't breathe through the thick smoke surrounding her, like she's dying from Cahill's best friend for the second time in two days. One of the next door neighbors is screaming, sirens are wailing in the distance, but all Irina can think about are the burns along her left arm and the stars in the sky. They're different stars than the ones in Indonesia, masked with smoke and blurred by heat waves, last night.

Arthur is trying to go back inside the house, which is filled with flames and looks minutes from collapsing. She should probably help Eisenhower keep him from doing so; Eisenhower is strong enough to easily lift Arthur off the ground, but Arthur's fighting, and a little prick from her right pinky will make him stop.

Just as the tranquilizer kicks in, Arthur mutters something about a clue, and Irina struggles not to roll her eyes; Hope somehow managed to find the most Cahillian non-Cahill Irina has ever met, and that list includes fourteen spies, three "diplomatic attaches", two Nobel Prize winners, and one man whose solution to any given problem was to throw it or himself through a wall. Irina looks around to make sure everyone got out of the house. Cora's car is gone, as is Isabel's - no surprise there - Hope is coughing heavily, and Alistair, visibly alright but looking very concerned, is at her side. Dan and Amy are-

Dan and Amy are gone. They're not in the house - Irina saw Mary-Todd and Arthur carry them out, and, since they didn't know of the clues until Grace's funeral, they aren't incentivized to follow in their father's _incredibly_ stupid footsteps - but they're nowhere in sight. Irina looks all around her just to be sure, but she can't find any sign of them. She also has a sinking idea where they've been taken.

The confrontation is over - the fire has been set, and its lighter has fled the scene - and everyone's alive, but in averting that tragedy, Irina's somehow caused another one in the making. Dan and Amy, the children she died for and was fully ready to do so again, are missing, and exactly one person Isabel has made disappear has ever come back alive. (At least, she assumes Beckmann's still alive somewhere; it's been fifteen - eight - years since she'd heard from her.) She'd thought this would be over - sans a confrontation with Isabel, an occurrence so common it hardly bears mentioning - but it looks like her mission's only started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Starling parents are named after Michael Faraday, father of E&M, and Eileen Hutchins, the famous Irish botanist.


	3. In Today (Already Walks Tomorrow)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Irina's mission completes itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Amy doesn't know where she is. It shouldn't be the thing that's scaring her the most right now - that should probably be her house going up in flames with her favorite books still inside or the the burns along her legs which are starting to hurt or that she didn't see Mom come out or that she has just been _kidnapped_ \- but it's all her mind can focus on right now. There aren't even any street signs for Amy to guess her location off of; she blacked out just after being carried out of the house, and she was far away from the city and any familiar road signage by the time she woke up.

Maybe she hasn't woken up yet. Maybe this is all a dream. Amy hopes it is a dream; if it's a dream, then she has to wake up eventually, and she'll wake up in her own bed and none of this will have ever happened. Until then, Amy tries to tell if the road around them has any distinguishing landmarks that can tell her where she is.

***

As Hope limps into her office, Irina wonders why she's still here. Alistair's already left, claiming too much excitement for one night and a need for peace and quiet, and she should have disappeared into the smoke-filled night with him. No one here - not Hope, not Arthur, and certainly not the Holts, who she's butted heads with more than once - trusts her, so her (worryingly limited but still more extensive than any of her current allies') knowledge of Isabel probably will be of little use in finding Dan and Amy. And even if she can help them find where Isabel's gone, they might be too late; it's been almost five hours already, and Agent Smith was dying of malignant hyperthermia the ER couldn't treat within four.

Hope comes back to the Holts' minivan - her own car had been damaged by the fire - with a laptop under one arm and a go bag slung over her other shoulder. As soon as she's seated, Hope opens the laptop and pulls up a street map of New England. It takes Irina a few minutes to notice that there is a blinking red dot traveling south.

"Is that Dan or Amy?" Alistair, who's peering at the map over Irina's shoulder, asks.

"Dan's bear," Hope says, and that's fairly clever for a woman who had decided her best course of action was to aggravate a woman who kills most of her enemies and many of her allies. The bear is presumably Dan's favorite, so he wouldn't part with it easily, and a tracker hidden within a bear could be significantly larger (and, therefore, emit a stronger signal and last longer) than a subcutaneous one. Irina frowns at the screen, running through the list of Lucian strongholds in her head.

"There's no Lucian base that way except for the one in New York, and Isabel wouldn't go there," Irina says. "That would be far too conspicuous." Hope frowns.

"Why are you telling us this?" she asks. "Isabel's _your_ ally."

"No more than the Man In Black is yours," Irina says. Arthur snorts. Irina wonders why; even if he has not interacted with Madrigals (which she sincerely doubts), his wife, like everyone else in this van, bears scars from Madrigal encounters.

"How so?" Hope asks.

"She's killed everyone I loved," _except for my brother, who won't speak to me,_ "and I am honestly surprised she hasn't killed me yet." _She's tried, of course, but not very hard; I have seven years before she succeeds, and even then it will be mostly by accident._ "She's caused good agents to die or defect for no reason but her own overinflated ego, and she's killed some of them herself." _And I can't watch another child die,_ Irina thinks but doesn't say; it won't help her here. _I can't do that again. I've_ died _for your children, Hope, and you won't live to see it but it was just yesterday for me. I'll sacrifice myself again if I have to, but your children are not dying today because of my inaction._ "We have a common enemy, Cahill, and that's enough for today."

"Doesn't Cora have a house in New York City?" Alistair, probably trying to break the tension, asks.

"She does," Arthur says, "and it isn't connected to a Janus stronghold." Something inside of Irina releases; if Cora took the children, they're probably alright. (At least Cora doesn't have a record for killing children that Irina knows about.)

"Let's go," Eisenhower says as he pulls away from the curb. "She's already a few hours ahead of us."

***

When Cora parks her car, dawn is just starting to break, and the New York house is quiet. Cora takes Dan out of the backseat - he's still clutching his ninja teddy bear and sleeping soundly - and unlocks the door. It's only when she sees that there's a light on in the kitchen that she remembers she didn't plan for the house to be empty this week.

"Leila, I wasn't expecting you for another two hours; you said your flight was going to be-" Cora can see the second her youngest sister realizes who just walked in. "I thought you weren't coming until tomorrow, Cora."

"Cam!" Cora puts some fake cheer into her voice as she pretends she doesn't wish Camille was anywhere else. "I thought you had finals this week."

"I had finals last week," Camille says (leaving the _not that you've ever cared about that_ implied this time), "and Cecelia ensured I left school as soon as possible." There's bitterness there - Camille has always resented Cecelia's presence in her life and the lack of freedom it represents - but Cora ignores it in favor of setting Dan, who is deceptively heavy for his small size, down. She doubts a fifteenth iteration of that particular argument wouldn't end with Camille being angry at her, and Camille will do anything to spite her eldest sister when she's angry. Camille's eyes flick to the boy's face and then back to Cora. "That's not Jonah."

"No, he isn't," Cora says, "but he's staying with me - with us - for now. He is Janus, after all." He's not - there's no evidence he is, at least - but it doesn't really matter to Cora. A path to a clue is a path to a clue. Power is power.

"That's Dan Cahill," Camille says, and Cora should probably ask why her sister knows what Hope Cahill's children look like even though Camille won't give her a straight answer. "Why the fuck do you have Dan Cahill with you?"

"It's been a long night," Cora says. "I'm going to bed. You'll let Leila in when she arrives, yes?" Cora doesn't wait for Camille to say anything; the vile-tasting gas station coffee is wearing off, and it really has been a long night.

As she flops down into a bed, Cora doesn't notice Camille's eyes flick towards first Dan and then the keys Cora dumped on the entryway table. By the time her car's engine roars, Cora's fast asleep; she doesn't even hear it drive off into the early morning light.

***

Just as the sun is starting to rise (to Amy's back, so they must have traveled west, but Amy's not sure for how long), the mean lady parks at a small farm. She pulls out a sleek-looking handgun from her purse and points it at Amy.

"Follow me," she says, and Amy gulps and races after her.

The mean lady heads for the barn - painted red with white details, just like the ones that pop up in Saturday morning cartoons that she and Dan watch with Dad - and fusses for a moment with the padlock keeping its doors shut. Amy briefly wonders if she should run for the woods to her right; the distance doesn't look that long, and she might be the slowest runner in her class, but even she could probably get that far as the mean lady tries key after key after key…

The mean lady finally gets the padlock open, and she turns to point the gun at Amy again. "Inside, now. No dawdling." Amy hurries after her but can't help but gasp as she sees the barn's contents: a sleek black helicopter with its lights already on and with a few stray pieces of straw stuck to its sides. As soon as Amy has struggled her way up into the cockpit - the ground clearance is almost half her height - the mean lady slides the door shut and walks into the cockpit. She slides that door shut behind her, too.

Less than a minute after the cockpit door slides shut, Amy hears a hiss, a _thump,_ and a crackle of speakers turning on. "Don't be afraid," a mildly accented voice says.

"I'm not," Amy says as her voice shakes.

"Of course you aren't," the voice says, "but lots of people are when I do this. Can you tell me your name?"

"I'm Amy," Amy says. "Amy Cahill. What's your name."

"It's nice to meet you, Amy," the voice says after a brief pause. "You can call me Nat. Help is coming, but it won't arrive for at least another hour or two. I'm going to need you to be very brave, okay?" Amy nods. "Good. There's a pair of handcuffs under the seat to your left. They should be unlocked. I'm about to open the cockpit doors. Here's what I need you to do…"

***

Halfway to New York, Eisenhower pulls into an empty parking lot and next to a black sedan with tinted windows. A black woman is standing next to the driver's door and fiddling with her nails. Hope doesn't wait for the van to fully come to a stop before jumping out.

"You have them?" Hope asks.

"Only one." The woman doesn't look up as she methodically chips off her emerald green nail polish. Panic starts to stir again in Irina's chest. "Dan's in the backseat. I don't know what happened to Amy, but Cora didn't have her. I'm sorry." Hope nods.

"Thanks, Lupa," Hope says as Arthur takes Dan out of the sedan's backseat. "At least I have one of them back. Can you head back safely?"

"It's not the first time I've gone against Cora," the woman (Hope called her Lupa, but that's a hilariously obvious codename for a Janus double agent) says, "and… one of my friends… has 'spontaneously' decided to make a trip to New York City in case things go wrong and I need to leave in a hurry. I'll be fine. Cora's probably not even awake yet." The woman drives off, and Irina's thoughts spin out of control.

Nine hours. It's been nine hours since the fire died out and the police left and they banded together to find Hope's children. A lot can happen in nine hours; Jones was dead in five, and Smith was uncontrollably vomiting blood in six, and Li's kidneys failed at seven… even Beckmann, luckiest of the unlucky, would've been at death's door by hour eleven (which is almost definitely going to come long before they find what remains of Amy Cahill) if she hadn't self-injected a little too little antidote, stole Irina's third favorite jacket, and stumbled out into the long, dark, cold winter night, never to be heard from again. Irina had allowed herself to think that, maybe, Isabel wasn't a culprit this time; she'd let herself believe that, maybe, people were going to walk away this time.

Irina's pager buzzes. She pulls it out of her pocket to see a message from an unknown number.

_Got the kid. Headed E towards you. - B_

"Who messaged you?" Mary-Todd asks.

"I don't know," Irina says as she shows Mary-Todd the message. It's not entirely true - Irina is pretty sure she knows who it is - but it will do until she's certain. "We need to head west." Discreetly, Irina messages back, _I want my coat back._ She receives a smiley face in reply.

***

Three and a half hours after Irina received Beckmann's message, Arthur pulls into an empty gas station to refill the minivan's gas tank and let someone else take over driving. As soon as he is out of the car, a dented, dark blue pickup truck pulls up alongside her. Its windows aren't tinted, so Irina can clearly see Beckman at the driver's seat and Amy in the passenger's seat behind her. Irina steps out of the minivan and sits in the pickup truck's front passenger seat.

"Hey, Spasky," Beckmann says as Arthur takes his daughter out of the backseat; aside from the burns on her legs, she looks remarkably alright. "I didn't expect to see you again."

"You messaged me, Beckmann," Irina says. Beckmann shrugs and fidgets with her thick glasses; they look exactly like the ones Irina last saw her in, complete with the tied-together left hinge.

"I didn't know it was you," Beckmann says. "It was just a number Radova gave me." Irina raises her eyebrows.

"Nataliya's in on this?" Irina's ignoring the massive question of how Nataliya, one of the most heavily surveilled Cahills in history, had Beckmann's number; Nataliya can find a way to do anything if she sets her mind to it. What's more strange at this particular moment is the fact that Nataliya, who has never expressed more than mild irritation with Isabel's actions, has decided to contact a traitor and go completely against Isabel. (Then again, Irina hadn't thought of going against Isabel except in her wildest dreams until less than a week ago, and she couldn't be "accidentally" killed in quite so many ways as Nataliya, who has just as many dead bodies as Irina for motivation.)

"Kabra tried to use the Shark," Beckmann says.

"She forgot about the remote override?" Irina guesses. (When it comes to incidents in the Shark not caused by someone forgetting to check the fuel gauge before taking off, it's almost always because someone forgot about the remote override.)

"And the knockout gas dispersal systems," Beckmann says, and Irina had forgotten about those, "and the unpickable cuffs Radova stashes under the passenger seats. Kabra was starting to stir when I got there, but I gave her another dose of sedative, and she's still locked to one of the seats."

"Good." Irina needs time to think without looking over her shoulder, to align her knowledge of what's to come with what's just happened, to plan what she needs to do next. The Trents have survived the fire - they've all survived the fire - but that doesn't mean they're safe yet; Kabra's never been inclined to give up until she gets what she wants, and Irina thinks she wants Hope and Arthur not only out of the clue hunt but also dead. "That should buy us a few hours."

"A few hours to do what?"

"We could run away. We could get false paperwork and onto a plane within five hours. We could start our lives over in some remote place, quiet and far from prying eyes. We could go to a city, hide in the crowds there. Or," Irina takes a deep breath, "we could get ready to instigate a shift in leadership. After last night and this morning, Kabra's power base is going to be shaky; we could probably disrupt it entirely if we tried." Honestly, between the old guard and the kids Kabra's tried to mold into perfect weapons and her tendency to kill good agents who disagreed with her, Irina isn't sure how Kabra's held onto power for so long, much less how she'll hold onto it until the day Irina dies.

"We should start at the New York base," Beckmann says. "It's the closest major base, and Isabel's never really been fully in control of it." The New York base is also incredibly well-connected; it handles the mission assignments and interest files and surveillance for all of North America.

"Let's go," Irina says, and Beckmann starts the engine. "How did Nataliya know to contact you and to tell you to contact me?" Beckmann fidgets with her glasses and laughs nervously.

"I wish I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," Beckmann says in her best James Bond impression. Irina lets the subject drop; Beckmann will just talk around the question if she asks it again, and answers can wait until after they've disrupted Isabel's control (or died trying, in which case the answers won't really matter anyways).


	4. Whatever Happens (There Will Be No Turning Back)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Irina and Beckmann start a coup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "If you see the President, tell him from me that whatever happens there will be no turning back." - Ulysses S. Grant

Isabel wakes on the floor of the Shark with the sun in her eyes. There's a foul taste in her mouth - she's been heavily sedated rather than knocked unconscious by force - and her left wrist is handcuffed to one of the passenger seats. There is a single tranquilizer dart on the floor of the Shark directly below her right arm; all of it except the needle is matte black, and there's a tiny M etched on one side.

"Nataliya?" Isabel says. There's a crackle of speakers; NRR has heard her and is now listening. "What happened?"

"I don't know." NRR sounds like she hasn't slept in a few days. "The CCTV storage at the barn has been broken for months."

"It's  _your_  job to monitor the Shark," Isabel says. "Particularly when someone is about to use it."

"You didn't tell me you were planning to use it," NRR says, "and you've known about the security flaw since I first noticed it. No one has been willing to drive out to Pennsylvania to deal with it yet. The key to the magnetic cuffs is under the seat to your left. Would you like me to contact the New York base?"

"No need," Isabel says as she unlocks the cuffs. "I can see my car." It's right next to the dirt road she used to get here, and the tires aren't even slashed; the Madrigals must be getting careless.

"Sure," NRR says as Isabel climbs out of the Shark and walks towards her car.

***

When Irina and Beckmann walk through its glass doors, the New York base is nearly empty. The bankers have already planned their moves for the day and left to earn the branch even more money; the classes on surveillance and countersurveillance and poisons and lying aren't currently in question; the agents permanently stationed in New York are either on missions or on leave. There's a guard by the door - there's always a guard at the door between the facade and stronghold proper in the major bases - but he doesn't even glance up to check if they're authorized to enter (or, in the case of Beckmann, if she's allowed to go anywhere near the base at all).

Derrick Collins, on the other hand, starts sweating bullets the moment he looks up from his computer and recognizes Beckman. It's almost hilarious, really, how much Collins, who is well over six feet tall and built like Eisenhower Holt, fears the woman who taught him basic surveillance and evasion and is half his size. (Not that Irina blames him for that; Beckmann's teaching style was…  _eclectic_ enough she only ever taught one course, and Linda Hou still can't look at parrots without shuddering.)

"Why are you here?" Collins asks as he looks around to see if anyone else has spotted them.

"Hey, Derrick," Beckmann says. "You got promoted!" Collins scowls. "Or not, but at least you're not stuck in Alaska with a dodgy heater anymore. How's it been going? I haven't seen you in-"

"Seven years, five months, and eleven days," Collins says. "And yes, I did get promoted - I'm the regional coordinator now - but you're deflecting. Why are you here? There's still a kill-on-sight order for you."

"There's a potential security breach at the Shark's barn," Irina says before Beckmann can continute on a tangent. "There is a significant chance the Shark will be spotted by civilians." Collins groans.

"What kind of breach?" he asks.

"Likely minor," Irina says. "Isabel tried to use it last night," Collins grumbles something that sounds suspiciously like  _"of course she did"_  under his breath, "and was foiled."

"And you know this because..."

"Regional coordinator is a really big step up for you, isn't it?" Beckmann says. "Especially when you were a low-level grunt guarding a clue in the middle of nowhere last year." Collins looks like he's about to slam his head into his desk.

"Why did you strand Isabel in the middle of Pennsylvania?" Collins asks. His voice sounds strained.

"That's why we're here," Irina says. Collins takes a deep breath and gestures for her to go on.

"Isabel's not good," Irina says. "She's not a good person - though that's stating the obvious, no proper Lucian branch head is good - and she's not good for the branch as a whole. Just look at our casualty counts for the past ten, fifteen years; we've lost far too many people on missions that shouldn't have been high-risk." Collins nods; about half his cohort is dead by now, if Irina remembers correctly; only three of those deaths were listed as by natural causes on the death certificate, and one of those was Smith. "We think we can change that." Collins' eyebrows rise.

"You've never cared for her, not even when you were eighteen and a fresh recruit," Beckmann says very quickly. "You hated the way she talked to you and your parents; you thought it was super condescending, and it was. You hated how she assigned recruits without any consideration of their skills. You hated how she beefed up London and Moscow and New York at the expense of the smaller bases. And you haven't hated her any less since then, have you? Especially after Smith's death." Collins looks a bit like Beckmann just punched him in the gut; Irina's merely grateful that Beckmann went for Smith instead of Collins' nine-year-old neice. "I know you two were... very close before he died."  _Before he was executed,_  Beckmann doesn't say for once, and Irina wonders if Beckmann only gains tact when she's afraid of her words being used against her. (If so, Irina isn't sure why she's saying Smith and Collins were "very close" and not "very unsubtly sharing a one-bed room on base", which was true both when Beckmann knew Collins well and when Smith died.) "And then he said something - or nothing - or maybe he did something - or nothing - and you went on a mission for a few weeks, and by the time you got back, he was dead and gone and buried." Collins nods.

"It was nothing really - some grumbling about the latest version of the post-mission reflection form," Collins says. "They said it was natural causes, but the untreatable fever? the tremors? the rapid decline? That couldn't have been natural."

"It wasn't," Irina says, "and he wasn't alone in that." Irina leaves the names unsaid; most of the ones she knows wouldn't mean much to Collins, anyways. "Smith was one of our best agents for sublte information gathering; he could get things out of people with a few words that we couldn't get with weeks of interrogation. If he wasn't safe, who is? The only person Isabel cares about is herself. Maybe Vikram and her kids, too, but mostly herself. That puts us all in danger; under her leadership, we have the highest agent mortality rate of any of the branches at any point in the past two hundred years. That's not something I want. That's not something  _you_ want. And if we want to change it, we need to work together." Collins looks at them and nods once.

"I'll handle the US bases," Collins says. "They know me and trust my opinions; they'll probably follow us. You and Beckmann should start with the international bases. Word will get out quickly, but I might be able to slow Isabel down so we only need to worry about Vikram." Collins taps a few keys on his keyboard. "Why is Isabel wanted for arson and kidnapping?"

"Because she did both last night," Irina says.

"Of course she did," Collins mutters as he types something. "Well, the APB has her license plate number now, and the warrant is linked with her license, so she'll get arrested if she's pulled over. Where should we call first?"

***

Cora wakes up at ten a.m., still sleep-deprived but more or less functional, to find both her sisters chatting quietly in the living room. There's a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen - Leila had an early morning flight, and Camille believes that caffeine is the substance of the gods - and Cora pours herself a cup. It's only then that she notices Dan Cahill isn't on the couch where she left him.

"What happened to Dan?" Cora asks. Leila looks up at her and blinks a few times, confused. Camille doesn't react at all.

"Who's Dan?" Leila asks.

"Cora picked up a kid overnight," Camille says. "He was gone when I came back from picking you up. I assumed his parents came for him." Camille's tone is so perfectly nonchalant that Cora almost believes Camille had nothing to do with Dan disappearing. (Cora would bet she disabled the CCTV camera watching the street, too, so there's no evidence of her latest act of rebellion.) "Do we have any plans for today?"

"The Met's added a new gallery," Cora says, "from an artist I've never heard of. It's quaint, but quite stunning if you go for-" Cora's phone buzzes. She checks it to see a warning:  _Be careful. Ls in flux._ "Or we could stay in and catch up on things. How's the pottery shop going, Leila? I haven't seen you in  _years."_

The Met's new gallery can wait a few days; it's not even technically open yet, so there's no rush to see it before it leaves. Besides, whatever the Lucians are doing will probably die down quickly - their coups generally do - and Cora knows better than to get into the middle of a Lucian power struggle.

***

They do not contact the London base. One of Collins' younger agents suggests it after the leader of the Paris stronghold screams that they're all "traitors to the Lucian cause" - Irina thinks his (incredibly naive, even for a new agent) resoning is that nothing could be worse than that - but Beckmann and Irina don't even try. They might manage to turn Paris later - they've turned half a dozen other major bases in the past three hours, which is more than Irina had hoped for - but London is not a battle they could possibly win. Not with most of the other bases unsecured. Not with the numbers they have unequivocally on their side right now. Not with Vikram still there. Not practically in the Kabras' backyard.

The London base contacts them fifteen minutes after they call Cape Town and find it already in chaotic rebellion. By then, they've contacted all the other major strongholds, and Moscow and Santiago and Tokyo are fully on their side with a dozen others almost there. It's more than Irina had dared to hope for, but it's not enough. It was never going to be enough.

"Collins," Vikram Kabra says as Beckmann carefully avoids the camera's view; a known traitor is more likely to get them all killed than convince Vikram to step down. "And Spasky. I thought you were staying in St. Petersburg for the forseeable future."

"Isabel requested I come here for her attempt to intimidate the Trents," Irina says. "It didn't work, and Isabel went on the run."

"And that's how she ended up in a jailhouse in the middle of nowhere?" Vikram asks. It takes all of Irina's composure not to react. It's good news - Isabel is definitely more likely to kill her enemies and let their bodies act as a deterrent - but she's also the one people tend to dislike; Vikram may be able to hold onto power by himself if he's careful enough. "Conveniently out of the way of your little revolution."

"It's not that little, Vikram," Collins says. "If it was, you wouldn't be attempting to intimidate us into backing down; you'd just kill us for treason."

"What do you think you're doing?" Vikram snaps. "You must know you can't force us out with what you have right now."

"We couldn't force you and Isabel out," Irina says, "but we don't have to. Isabel's been arrested, and I think the charges will stick this time. And we both know that Isabel is the power player in your relationship."

"I guess we'll see about that." Vikram closes the connection.

"How would we kill Vikram without getting ourselves killed in the process?" Collins asks. "Linda's currently stationed in London, but I don't think Vikram will let her close enough after your threat."

"The London base's ventilation isn't secured," Beckmann says. "We could evacuate everyone else we could - or strike at night - and pump in gas. Or set it on fire; unless they've updated it since I left, the fireproofing there is  _so_  not up to code."

"We'll cross that bridge if we come to it," Irina says. "I'm more worried about what happens after he's gone." Vikram isn't going to put up his replacement, so they're moving towards a power vaccuum, and power vaccuums in the Lucian branch tend to get very messy very fast. They need a candidate - ideally only  _one_  candidate - going in, or things are not going to end well. "Collins, would you be willing to take another promotion?"

"I would," Collins says, "but I'm not sure people outside of the state will go for it. I'm not well-known outside of my home region."

"Ten years ago, neither was Isabel," Irina says.


	5. The Truth Will Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vikram surrenders. He leaves something important behind.

Vikram sits in the London base's command center and watches the massive, constantly updating map that takes up an entire wall. He's been staring at for hours now, and it isn't doing anything special, but he can't make himself look away. If he leaves it, something will happen - a cry for help, a suggestion for a counterattack, a message from Isabel or the Boston police - and he won't see it until it's too late. So Vikram sits and watches the map as the red dots that represent Lucian strongholds go dark one by one as they cut their connection to the London base. Most of Asia is dark now, as are parts of Europe and all of the bases in the Americas except Anchorage and New York City, which is still stubbornly blinking as if it hadn't started this whole mess. (New York is still up because they need the comms network, Vikram knows, and he could shut them off with some effort and a few technicians, but it would do nothing now that Spaky and Collins' message has crossed the globe, and Vikram might have some chance for a sneak retaliation if the network's still open.)

"Has anything changed?" Lucy Beckett asks as she comes in, cup of tea in hand. Vikram rubs his eyes; he'd thought it was still the middle of the night, that he'd have a few hours to sleep, but his deputy (and third in line to the position of Lucian branch head) comes in every morning at 6:30 like clockwork regardless of what's happening within or outside the branch.

"We're losing," Vikram says.

"We knew that last night," Lucy says.

"Beijing fell a few hours ago," Vikram says. "It was the last of the major bases besides us and Paris, and Paris is wavering." Quite frankly, Vikram is surprised and perhaps a little touched that Paris is only wavering; he'd thought their leader to be too obsessed with power to stay with Vikram's rapidly sinking ship. (Then again, Thibault believes that there's a vial of Lucian serum hidden somewhere in the city, so he might not have realized yet how tenuous Vikram's power is at the moment.) "Do you have an exit plan ready?"

"There's good business for translators," Lucy says. "Particularly ones who know what not to translate. I'll change my name and go to ground here. Maybe I'll end up back in the foreign relations department in ten years when most of the branch has forgotten my face. Even now, I think they know me by the hair more than anything." Lucy ruffles her brick red hair and shrugs.

"Good," Vikram says. "I've emailed Stevens to prepare to take over all of the art business while I take a trip to discover new artists and styles around the world." He has the fake documents he needs to get himself and Ian and Natalie out of the country, and a few years of disappearing into parts unknown will allow tempers to cool a little and Collins and Spasky to stop seeing him as a threat. Lucy snorts.

"Haven't you used that excuse before?" Lucy asks. "At least four times that I can think of, in fact."

"It still works." Vikram looks at the map; the stronghold in Anchorage has gone dark and that's happened before due to snowstorms and broken solar panels but Vikram can't make himself believe that's the case this time. "I figure we have an hour, maybe two, until Paris falls, and we can't stand alone for long. What can we do to make the transition as difficult as possible for Collins and Spasky in that timeframe?" Lucy grins.

"Quinn in Technical has a couple of answers to that question," she says.

*******

Irina probably should have guessed things were about to go horribly wrong as soon as Anchorage, home base to twenty agents and a pack of mission-trained huskies, finally flipped after twenty-three hours of intense debate. It leaves only sixteen strongholds still allied with Vikram Kabra: London, Paris, and a handful of small satellite bases, three of which are the homes of senior agents and ex-agents, across the UK and northern France. It's a region of influence so small it has to be claustrophobic for someone used to ruling the world, and Irina remembers the time she and Vikram faced a dozen Madrigals in Venice; she knows what happens when Vikram feels trapped. (Namely, a dozen corpses, two burning gondolas, and a bridge that will never look the same.)

It takes fifteen minutes after Anchorage calls New York to say they've turned for all the fire alarms in the building to go off. Thirty seconds after that, as the few of Collins' people still here at one in the morning frantically look for the source of the fire or a way to shut off the alarm, the computers bluescreen simultaneously, error messages frantically rushing past. The large screen at the front of the comms center, a map which shows all the Lucian strongholds and their connectivity status, goes black. Foul-smelling white smoke trickles out from the server room next door.

This isn't a coincidence. This can't be a coincidence. Not after the past day.

"Are we still connected to London?" Collins, having also realized that Vikram must have something to do with this, asks.

"Unless whatever caused this has disconnected us," a very young-looking technician says as he tries to bring his computer back from the brink, "yes, we are."

"Break the connection," Collins says.

"Sir, the comm network-"

"-take us offline; we can reconnect later." The technician shrugs, grabs a fire extinguisher, and goes into the server room; moments later, the map screen comes back to life, and the computers around the room slowly reboot. The clamor in the server room slowly dies down. "Something's happened in London."

"No shit, Sherlock," Beckmann says. "The only question is what. Hey, isn't Linda still stationed in-" Collins has already dialed Hou's number and is waiting for her to pick up.

"Linda, can you go check on the London stronghold?" Collins asks. "Yes, I know it's early - it's not exactly a reasonable hour over here, either - but something's happened here that I think is connected to the London base… He told you to stay away? Just check for me, quickly, please… you owe me one after Beijing… It's deserted? Can you get a look inside…" Collins turns back to Irina and Beckmann. "He's trashed the files. Both the paper ones and his servers. I'm not sure if the same has happened to the other bases."

"Ms. Spasky?" A teenaged girl with a faint Yorkshire accent taps Irina on the shoulder. "Isabel had her own set of files at the London base. They were in a locked steel box in a false bottom in her wardrobe. I don't think Vikram knew about them, so he might not've destroyed them." Collins looks at the girl, who seems to shrink under his stare. "She'd send me on missions sometimes that I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about, and she always put my reports in there when she did."

"Go to Isabel's room on base," Collins says into his phone. "She's in jail over here, so don't worry about her catching you. There should be a wardrobe with a false bottom…"

*******

_Ks deposed. New L leader to be Derrick Collins - first council meeting in two days. Servers burned, but Isabel's files left behind._

The message is short and to the point. All of the missives from the agent who calls themself "Andere" are; Grace thinks that, at three sentences long, this one might be the longest message she's received in the nine years Andere has been an agent. That doesn't mean that Andere's report doesn't have some impressively solid information on the current state of the Lucian branch that not even NRR has said yet.

_Ks deposed. New L leader to be Derrick Collins - first council meeting in two days._

Those two sentences alone betray a familiarity with modern Lucian politics that Grace thought Andere - a skilled former Lucian agent who the Madrigals mostly used for interrogations or their understanding of Lucian tech - lacked. NRR had mentioned the first call to rebel coming from New York - Collins' home stronghold - but hadn't mentioned him by name or the Kabras being even close to resignation. (On the other hand, NRR had said something about Spasky being involved, which Andere has skirted around confirming or denying.) In a way, the fact that the new head of the Lucian branch is a man who attempted to break into Fort Knox twice doesn't really matter, but it also really does; Grace hadn't thought the Kabras would leave in any way but by their own free will. A coup - a popular uprising, which is nearly unprecedented, no less - is astounding, and that's not even the most ground-shaking part of the message.

_Servers burned, but Isabel's files left behind._

Of course Vikram went for the grand "fuck you" gesture and tried to cripple his (now ex-) branch on his way out, but…

_Isabel's files left behind._

_Isabel's files left behind._

Grace doesn't know what files of Isabel's were left behind, or what's in those files, but she's sure that, within the week, she'll find out.

*******

Just as the New York base starts to look more occupied and Irina wakes up from a well-deserved nap (she can't run solely on caffeine and will anymore, after all), Hou contacts them. Her eyes widen as she recognizes the woman at Irina's side as Beckmann.

"Hey Linda," Beckmann says before Hou can ask what she's doing in the New York base. "What did you call about?"

"I've gotten into Kabra's files," Hou says. "They're all digital, and the encryption took me a while, but you really need to see them to believe it. I just sent the files to your computer." Collins nods and retreats to his office.

"So," Hou says. "The Kabras gone and my old teacher's back from the dead?" Beckmann scoffs.

"I was never actually  _dead_ ," Beckmann says. "And I wasn't expecting it either. It's been a very interesting week."

"It's been a very long week," Irina says. What's really impressive about it is how it seems to get longer every time she closes her eyes, particularly since it began with her dead.

"So," Hou says. "Where have you been since-"

"Beckmann, Spasky," Collins says in a tight voice. "You need to see this." Beckmann and Irina follow him back to his office, where he's pulled up the first of Kabra's files, the ones Hou marked "important." At a quick glance, Irina can see why; the others are probably reports of murder at Isabel's orders, but these are her reports to a different organization altogether. These are the ones that implicate her betraying her branch to… maybe not the Madrigals - Isabel was certainly vicious towards them - but certainly a shadowy third party.

"Did either of you know about this?" Collins asks. Irina shakes her head. "How was our branch leader a Madrigal without anyone - even her husband - knowing?"

"She wasn't a Madrigal," Beckmann says. Collins looks at her; she looks down and fidgets with her glasses. "She hated them, didn't she? She hated them a lot. And so did Vikram. Plus, there were a bunch of Madrigal incidents we know about in that timeframe that aren't mentioned: no Belgrade, no Venice, no Juneau. And Isabel would have been involved in those."

"Hope said something, right before the fire," Irina says. "At least one of you gives all your information to an organization that isn't even Cahill. And when Cora suggested the Madrigals, she acted like she wanted us to believe it was even though it wasn't. I agree with Beckmann; I think there's another group involved." Collins sighs and put his head in his hands.

"Of course it couldn't be as simple as just the Madrigals," he mutters. "What will we tell the council?" The leaders of the other major bases around the world will be out for blood and power after the Kabras' resignation, and adding evidence of treason to the mix seems like it will only make matters worse.

"The truth," Beckmann suggests. "Maybe imply some foreknowledge that she was a double agent, too. We have the evidence to back it up."

"Assuming they don't think it's forged," Collins says.

"I don't think you can forge digital files that well," Irina says, "and we'd just make her a Madrigal if we did. Should we try to tell the other branches? We're probably not the only ones with this problem."

"If we're worried about the council believing us, then the other branches  _definitely_  won't believe us," Collins says. "We could maybe try to contact a few members at a time, but I'm not sure if even that would work."

Irina has an idea how well that would work with Alistair. She looks through the files for any Ekat names or places and comes across a pair. She quickly texts him,  _Look into Ana & Theodora Kosara. Not Madrigals._

He might do nothing. Me might follow her lead like he did earlier this week at the Trent house. He might find nothing. He might find what they've just found. Knowing which will come to pass is only a matter of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ends the first little arc (of hopefully only two) of this fic and is also the last update of this fic for a month or two.


End file.
